Serpent at the Window
by viggen
Summary: A lethal invader pentrates NERV HQ and a fifteen minute game of cat and mouse ensues.


Serpent at the Window  
by viggen 

All was serene at the Evangelion storage cages. Unit-00 was locked in the first block, pieces of its blue armor suspended from a crane before it. The next block contained Unit-01, brilliant purple and green marred from the recent fight. A large spear was propped in a cradle to the side. Unit-02 was last, one of its arms outstretched laterally in the process of repairs. The armor plating about its head was finally in one piece again. A few maintenance engineers milled about on the platforms here and there, but the work shift change was not finished and most personnel were either gone for the evening or not yet arrived for the late shift. Every few minutes, teams of armed guards carrying machine guns made circuits through the chamber, checking IDs with unscrupulous attention. After all the incidents in the past few weeks where NERV Central Command had been directly attacked, internal security was in a significantly heightened state.

Despite the cameras and the few extra sets of eyes, at just that moment no one was paying enough attention to see it. The tiniest gap in time came to pass when not a single person looked in quite the proper direction. Under the cowling of its armored brow, sparks of light appeared in the eyes of Eva-01. At first, it was not much, little more than the whirling point of a candle flame on a darkened field. But, nobody noticed during that critical instant when something might possibly have been done. The glow strengthened steadily, as if approaching from a great distance. Then the fractured moment was past. What would come next became set in stone, irrevocable beyond all hope of avoidance. The calibrating instant, the line across which there was no return, had been calculated with deft precision, optimizing for the greatest chance at success.

Suddenly Unit-01 gave a twitch. It jerked without any source of power, its body responding to a waves of muscular effort that derived seemingly from nowhere. A thundering boom resounded through the huge bay. Straining metal shrieked as the Evangelion wrenched its safety locks.

The alarms did not begin howling until several second later. With the floor quivering and equipment crashing down, engineers ran for the exits shouting at one another in fear. The soldiers were somewhat less excitable as they stood their ground, guns held ready and looking around for the intrusion. It took nearly everybody a second, and a double take, to realize that Unit-01 was the source of the chaos. Fragments of broken concrete hailed from the ceiling when the humanoid machine gave another colossal wrench against its restraints. People scattered when it lifted its foot.

* * *

Lt. Maya Ibuki was almost alone in the backup command center.

Repairs were nearly complete on the regular command center upstairs, but the room was still not fully usable. Access to the Magi supercomputers had been routed to the smaller room and tactical projections were managed on a wall sized projector screen. Not quite as good as the holographic display in the other suite, but not unusable either.

Aside from a shy new recruit by the name of Otomu Sagashi, Maya was alone in the command suite. There had been other officers around through parts of the earlier evening, but most everybody was occupied with other mundane duties. Major Katsuragi was somewhere else in the complex catching up on paperwork. Dr. Akagi and Commander Ikari had been around until about a half hour before, then retired to a conference room to talk about things Maya was certain she really did not want to know. Shigeru and Hyuga were both off on a rare bout of leave, which would probably manifest as a hangover in the morning. Maya, locked into duty by default, wiled away the quiet time with an eye on the situation boards as she listened to some music. Not something she often found time to do. She sat with her feet propped and enjoyed the stillness.

Sagashi sat with his back to her as he poured over a displayed diagnostic on some obscure communications systems. He seemed to have a remarkable talent for keeping himself busy on miscellaneous tasks. She found herself wondering what he was doing on and off for hours, but felt certain he was much too introverted to be comfortable talking about it. She had seen the tips of his ears redden when he reported to her for duty.

"Say..." she began by the by, deciding to attempt to strike up a conversation anyway.

He was just starting rotate in his seat to look her way when the fabric of the whole room abruptly buckled. "Wha-Aaii!" he yelped as he fell to his rump on the floor.

Her eyes going wide, Maya's feet flipped off the edge of the console and her chair almost went over backward. "What the...!!" she cried, dragging herself bodily back to the panel.

The alarms sounded that instant in a deafening blare of klaxon noise and the red alertness lights mounted in the corners of the room began to strobe.

"Is- is it an Angel?!" Sagashi squeaked, his face as pale as a sheet. He was at her console looking over her shoulder before he thought better.

"Man your post!" she yelled at him as she went to work. -Is it and Angel?- she wondered to herself, cringing at the possible answer. Her fingers stroked across the keys, dragging an almost sluggish response from the sensors and the Magi. The answer arrived at last several very long moments later, "...An energy flare from the holding cages! Not enough to judge a pattern, but it might've been an AT Field!"

"Communications are up!" Sagashi exclaimed in a wavering voice, "They're calling for help at the Cages," he paused, "Wait, Commander Ikari is calling."

"What are you waiting for?" she gestured the junior officer to do his job.

The speakers came to life over Maya's head, "Lieutenant, what is going on?" Gendo Ikari's voice was as cool and calm as usual, but he did sound concerned.

"I'm still trying to figure that out, Sir," Maya responded. "Magi catalogue a brief surge of energy in the Eva hold cages that might have been an AT Field, but I can't match any patterns. Sagashi says they're calling for help down there. We don't know why yet!"

"Very well," Ikari exclaimed, "I will be down shortly. Which pilots are on standby?"

"Only Rei," Maya said, glancing at the schedules, "Asuka's not medically cleared for duty yet, but I can get hold of Shinji."

"Do so," the commander said, "And get in touch with Fuyutsuke and Katsuragi. Have Rei dress down and Unit-00 prepped."

"But, it's the cages..." she began to argue, "what if we can't get to Unit-00..."

"I heard you. Do what you can; I said I would be there shortly."

"Yes, Sir," she replied smartly as Ikari shut off the link.

"Um, uh," Sagashi was practically jumping up and down in his seat, "Ma'am. It's Post 40 at the Cages! It's Unit-01! They say Unit-01 is moving on its own!"

Maya flipped through the status displays, her lips pursed, "But the entry plug's out and main power's not connected. The batteries aren't even showing a charge..." she glanced between two displays, "...Wait, here's something. I'm getting a strange feedback from the core. The motor safeties are disabled. Who disabled them?"

The floors vibrated persuasively, a deep rolling note of some great leviathan rolling over where it could not be seen. Sagashi shook his head, "Nobody knows anything, but they say it's definitely moving on its own power."

"Can they get to Unit-00?" Maya asked, "Commander Ikari wants it readied if possible."

"The technician there doesn't even want to try," Sagashi looked toward her, some confidence appearing through his nervousness, "They say Unit-01 is knocking everything around down there."

The lights dimmed and then strengthened again.

"What's going on?" Maya wondered in a suppressed voice. The command telemetry for Unit-01 was totally dead, as if the Eva were frozen in deep storage, yet a signal from the Core scrolled across the screen like a heartbeat. Without thinking, Maya recorded the ambiguous pattern. What in the world was going on?

"That's what I want to know!" Misato Katsuragi asked from the doorway, her dark hair in disarray after a long day of work.

* * *

The Eva jerked and twisted in a blind panic, its massive mouth hanging silently open in a rictus not quite like a scream. Its huge eyes blazed as the muscles beneath its plating writhed and pulled. Showering sparks and flying fragments, it wrenched its right forearm free of the restraining block. Sections of armor pulled loose in the frenzy crashed resoundingly to the floor. With its free foot, it kicked forcefully into the base of a crane that was holding an Eva sized sniper rifle, sending it thundering into a far wall. Then it slammed the foot back into the block restricting the rest of its body and strained so mightily that the other two cages deformed. The remaining locks yielded with a questioning gasp accompanied by several pieces of flying debris hitting some unbroken glass windows.

Suddenly free and off balance, the tall purple machine fell ponderously forward until it crashed into a gantry frame. For a moment it remained still. Its body heaved as if it were struggling for breath. With spasms rippling through its limbs, it struggled to prop itself with its right hand and cantilevered its body toward an upright position. It could not support its own weight. The left hand abruptly flailed up, fingers latching and scrabbling along its plated belly until they hooked laboriously into the armor at its own sternum. Then it threw back its head and clenched into the armor plate. The sinewy muscles in its gigantic arm ballooned with effort. Once it managed to tear away its breast plate, it sank wearily against the gantry and relaxed again. The plate of armor thudded emptily to the floor beneath.

Laid open for the whole world to see was Unit-01's huge spherical core. It glimmered from within like a ruby with gigantism. Spotlights around the holding cage dimmed as the internal fluorescence of the great gem intensified. The Eva allowed its body to slump down the gantry until it nearly touched its forehead against the chamber floor.

Something fell out of the light from the exposed core into a cluttered pile on the concrete. A slather of golden fluid spread out around the form. The huge Eva swayed back precariously until it was crouched weakly on its knees. The glow in its core faded away until the enormous jewel was a dull burgundy. It waited.

The naked body of a man lay covered with LCL. Almost as soon as he struck the floor, his eyes fluttered and he became conscious. He vaguely remembered that ride from before, but the recollection was fleeting. That last time had not been his choice and the trip itself simply occurred outside his power. Of course, no choice was involved with this ride either, even though he knew before the fact basically what would happen. He shivered with cold at meeting open air so abruptly. No time, no time! Run now!

His first couple movements were poorly coordinated, the flopping of limbs in a random circle around his body until he managed to find some focus. Initially he could not even tell whether he lay on his back or on his stomach. One overwhelming, driving memory bulled its way through the confusion -he had to move. Immediately. He remembered talk about a window, and something more, but nothing would settle into place. Must move. By the time he got his hands and feet against the LCL soaked floor beneath him, his eyes were finally showing form in addition to color. He crouched, senses spinning.

"Who are you?" a male voice asked. There was a dark silhouette of a man with a long rifle hovering over him. The herald of death.

He shook his head to clear the fog muddling his brain. The window was closing already. Must move!

With a spectacular and slightly clumsy lunge forward on his belly in the slick puddle of fluid, he spiraled his right foot in a low raking curve across the floor and attacked the unsuspecting soldier's feet. The poor man went head over heels onto his back, his gun flipping out of his hands. Then the intruder was there, dropping his elbow straight into the soldier's momentarily exposed throat with a crack.

Something else caught his attention. Feet were clattering his direction.

Before the first victim finished twitching as he suffocated, the intruder caught up the man's discarded rifle, rolled onto his back and set the weapon to his shoulder. From a nearly prone position, he stared down the gun sight and squeezed the trigger. Thirty feet distant, a bloody hole appeared between the rim of the next soldier's helmet and the bridge of his nose, dropping him immediately to the ground. Spinning himself with his feet, he did not stop there. The rifle boomed and jerked in his hands as each new target presented itself to be instantaneously exterminated. Ejected brass casings tinkled onto the ground around him with each squeeze of the trigger.

One last soldier tried to play it smart by sticking to some cover behind a piece of gantry in order to sneak around behind the invader. He cried out in surprise and anger when he exposed himself for the kill only to find the intruder was no longer there. Having rolled under a section of the same broken support structure, the intruder shot him in the ankle for luck, then in the face when the man's upended body fell into his firing arc. The intruder's ears were ringing when he finally stopped pulling the trigger.

In the sudden absence of gun fire, other shouts rang out in the vast chamber, but nobody else attacked for the moment. Blood and bodies littered the floor.

Dropping the rifle, the intruder grabbed one of his less soiled opponents and dragged the corpse into shelter behind the dislodged chest section of Unit-01's armor. The Evangelion hovered over him quivering, its huge body sending faint tremors into the floor. The intruder began to strip off the man's clothing and protective equipment. He set the soldier's handgun and knife aside, then quickly pulled on the dead man's pants and shirt. He left the body armor -it would only get in the way. The clothing was just barely big enough to fit. Sadly, the shoes were too small.

While he dressed, he took stock of his new surroundings. The Evangelion holding cages were exactly as he remembered, albeit somewhat the worse for wear. It seemed so empty. Only three of the humanly combat machines were housed here. There was a fourth dock outfitted, but it stood unoccupied. He remembered vividly the disaster with Unit-03. Yet, with just these three Units, the bays seemed empty. It was as if he had never been here before, even though he knew every shadow and access way by heart.

Must keep moving, must keeping moving, he reminded himself. There was no time to waste. The window was closing. Exacting mathematical figures defined where everything was and would be. There was no time. If he stopped moving, he was worried about what might happen. He grabbed up both weapons he had taken from the corpse and put them into the waist band at the back of his pants. As an afterthought, he stole the watch off the wrist of the body at his feet.

The intruder turned to the shivering Eva Unit-01. He smiled gently upward, "Before I go, I want to thank you for bringing me this far. If it weren't for you..." he shook his head as he trailed off. "...We owe you everything. I know it's hard, but I've got one last thing I need you to do for me. If you can, I need you to knock out the power grid."

It almost nodded and struggled pathetically to its feet. The intruder turned and moved. He glanced at the watch.

* * *

"There's gunfire in the Cages," Sagashi cried excitedly, "Post 40 says there're men down. They need help right away, they're calling for medics!"

Misato Katsuragi shook her head, "Dammit. Divert all internal security teams down there right away." She turned to Maya, "Did you say Rei was on her way to the cages?"

"She was," Maya glanced over her shoulder, "Commander Ikari wanted Unit-00 prepped for use."

"Forget that," Misato told her, "If there's gunfire down there, it means somebody's infiltrated the Base. We have to seal off the Central Dogma right away."

"Infiltrated?" Sagashi blurted, "From the Eva Cages? But how? They said Unit-01 was making some crazy movements, even that it was tearing off its own armor, but they didn't say anything about people."

"They don't have to," Misato exclaimed in annoyance, "an exchange of gunfire means that there have to be people down there. For the moment never mind how..."

"But, the Eva," Maya said, "It is moving around. What do we do about that?"

Misato shook her head in frustration, "What have we ever been able to do about that damned Unit-01 when it decides to go out of our control?"

"Indeed," Commander Ikari stood at the door, one hand behind his back and the other pushing his glasses up his nose. Dr. Akagi was right behind him, looking slightly disheveled and frowning. "Major Katsuragi," he declared, "Would you be so kind as to head up the search for these intruders of yours?"

"Of course," Misato said bitterly, turning to Sagashi, "tell the communications reserve teams what's going on, we need every set of eyes we can get looking for the same thing right now. We have to know how many there are..."

"Have Rei come here," Commander Ikari ordered Sagashi, "we may need her and Unit-00 later."

"Right away, Sir." the pale youth responded as he focused diligently on his console.

"Is there any word from Shinji?"

"No sir, I just got the page out a minute ago."

Gendo Ikari stepped in smoothly and took charge of the Eva situation, both hands now clasped firmly behind his back. "Lieutenant," he spoke grimly to Maya, "is there any telemetry from Unit-01?"

"No sir," Maya told him, "And it shouldn't have any battery power either."

"Very well," he continued, "have a team move the new high intensity EMP generator onto equipment elevator three. Tell them I want it down there in five minutes or less."

"Yes, sir," she nodded quickly and went about complying.

"If I may," Dr. Akagi stepped in, strangely quiet, "Is there any data from Unit-01's core?"

As she worked, Maya nodded, "There was something, but I didn't know what to make of it."

Dr. Akagi brushed a stray thread of her bleached blonde hair out of her face and stepped up to a free terminal. She rapidly tapped the keys and began to call up read-outs.

Misato only paid attention offhand, having taken a seat next to Sagashi and bent her neck to the fantastic task of sifting through the security camera imagery in search of who-knew-what. She threw data onto the wall sized screen as she worked.

"They say Unit-01 is standing," Sagashi alerted them excitedly, "It's..."

A fantastic jolt carried through the riveted structure of the entire base, followed rapidly by another and then a third. Abruptly the lights, the alarms and each of the computer monitors flashed out. The sound of cooling fans died away.

In the dark, Sagashi swallowed loudly, as if he expected to take full responsibility for the event, "It's... er... what I mean to say is, Unit-01 was moving to attack the power relay conduits in the Eva cages."

"Shit," Misato exclaimed despite herself. Dr. Akagi could also be heard issuing a short profanity under her breath. Commander Ikari stood by with an empty face.

"Emergency power will come up automatically," he said.

Almost as if his words were the trigger, dull red lighting poured through the room. Ikari nodded, "Now, bring up the communications systems and reconnect to the Magi. We need engineers to reroute the power system around the damage in the holding cages."

Misato shook her head and began to work at restoring security.

"Elevators are out," Maya intoned softly, "we aren't getting any extra hands down here."

"Is Central Dogma secure?" Ikari asked Misato.

She shrugged, "I'm trying to get the security systems back up as quickly as possible. I can't tell what's going on down there."

"Commander," Dr. Akagi said with excessive formality, "before we were so rudely cut off, I was setting up an analysis of the telemetry data Lt. Ibuki collected from Unit-01's core. Since the Magi are on independent power, they should still be chewing on it. As soon as the link is restored, I should have some immediate results. There's nothing significant to note now, but the pattern is familiar."

"How so?" Ikari asked.

"Kind of hard to say. It appears very much like contamination backwash overlaid on a pilot's neural readout. Almost as if the Eva's core was imprinted by a full human mind. There was also the strong trace of a decaying quantum interference pattern exhibited on the output terminals. It's similar to the old data when we lost... well you know."

Gendo Ikari's eyes narrowed behind his tinted glasses, "Much like the entry plug injection experiments."

She nodded, "Very much like an incompatible pattern. But I haven't seen one quite like this before. I want to do more analysis before I commit for certain."

Sagashi gave a gasp, "I have limited communication back. Teams down in the cages say there're bodies all over the place. Dead by... well, by gunshot wound. One of the bodies was dragged and stripped."

"I see," Ikari responded.

"One other weird thing," Sagashi said with a little quirk of the lip, "Somebody's messed around with the shoes of several of the corpses."

"So, we do seem to have an uninvited visitor," Gendo Ikari touched his thin beard.

* * *

Must move. Must run like the wind. Don't think about it. Just run.

It was his credo, the words he lived by that kept him going through the years. The window was closing in behind him like an invisible veil. He had to move, and fast, to stay within the hypothetical hole leading down the turnpike of occurrence. It was as if the whole of reality were a contoured cushion with a valley he had to follow, except that the passage of time was rapidly filling it in. One wrong turn, delay in one spot too long, and the chances of success would evaporate -no matter how skilled he was. He knew the time frame perfectly by feel, but kept an eye on the stolen wrist watch anyway. He was worried. Must keep moving.

He ran silently with long, loping strides. The stolen boots were barely a fit -regretfully, foot abuse was one thing he still could not abide. He was not a terribly huge man, but his limbs were lanky and muscular. Every velvet step brought him one closer to his objective as he stole from shadow to shadow in the dull, red light.

The insertion path selected for him upon his egress from the Evangelion holding cages was calculated to keep him away from the most highly probable encounter situations with NERV defenders. The statistics indicated he had an average of four hundred and sixty seconds before the power came back on, leaving him fully vulnerable to the security cameras, but the thirteen second standard deviation could make all the difference in the world. That in mind, he ran.

There was a forty second stop while he hotwired a vault door gauged high-probability of closure, but nearly everything went exactly as plotted. Of course, he had tampered with that particular door so many times in practice that he was through it fifteen seconds ahead of the allowance. Running kept him just ahead of the curve. Not much ahead. Any physical activity at all was enough to hold his mind away from his concerns. Keep running.

In so deserted a state, these corridors held a haunting quality. They were so new, so clean and unused. So devoid of even the signs of use. There were too few stains. How many times had he seen refugees hunkered in that corner there? Then there was the regular stream of spent children being wheeled past on medical gurneys. The ravages of backwash contamination left them hollow eyed and still, faces forever unsmiling. An older gentleman had died of a heart attack along this stretch.

His tingling instincts, honed with years of torture, prevented him from bombing around the next corner.

He stopped to listen carefully. Several patrolling guards could be heard murmuring amongst themselves not far ahead. The strength of their voices and the echoes off the nearby walls told him exactly where they were and how many. There was no time to stop and hide; the steadily closing window saw to that. He turned the corner knowing precisely what he had to do. Knife in hand, he did it without a second thought. Exactly as trained.

"Wha... who are you?" the two stood abreast the hallway, several meters separating them. The one closest to the intruder noticed him first.

Like a striking viper, he closed the distance and bit the fellow in the fleshy wrist of the trigger hand with a deft blade stroke. Simultaneously, he stomped a booted heel into the side of the man's knee, breaking the joint sideways, then jabbed a calloused knuckle into a death point in the side of the man's neck. The entire attack was orchestrated before the guard fully dropped the gun as precipitated by the knife slice on the wrist. The newest victim collapsed to the floor with his hands going to his throat, perceiving his death with wide eyes.

"Stop right there!" The other guard was in the process of shouting, his weapon rotating inevitably around toward the intruder. A tension on that trigger would rattle a dozen bullets through his body and into the wall in the blink of an eye. The intruder never bothered to second guess. That idea had been beaten out of him with long experience. He did not know if he feared for his life, but to pause was to die.

Despite all else, he knew the simple fact that he was fast. Decades of continuous labor made him fast. Simple, thoughtless speed.

He stepped over the fallen guard with the spinning grace of a ballerina. His left foot snapped up in a hook kick that dashed the gun aside and knocked the second guard's hands out of the way. One serpentine whirl brought him inside, well within the kill radius. He settled his body and dropped a heavy palm into the man's chest. The shockwave from the perfectly angled blow broadcasted straight through the soldier's body armor and exploded his heart. The killer's other hand, lead by the butt of his knife, came up almost the same instant under the man's chin, knocking his helmeted head back into the wall with a mind numbing clap.

And it was over. Two corpses, not even ten seconds.

Wondering if anybody had heard either of the men yelling, the intruder caught the limp body and lowered it to the floor. He felt fear, but there was no time. He debated swiping ammunition from both dead men.

A nearly silent footstep on the floor behind him perked his ears. Bringing out his handgun on impulse, he whirled and dropped into a low shooting stance. But drew up short, "...Ayanami..."

Rei Ayanami stood silently by, watching him with her lips an inscrutable line. Her albino coloring and paper thin skin practically glowed. That straight hair seemed to be made of silver and those unpigmented eyes regarded him from the depths of a mysterious innocence. Still, the directness of her gaze was tempered by an intangible wisdom. She wore the form-fitting white plugsuit he remembered her wearing. The shape of her face was disturbingly familiar.

He wanted to move. Away.

"Will you do it this time?" she asked in that eternally cool voice, "Or will you run away again?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, contemplating shooting the fourteen year old girl. He hated the sound of his voice next to her's; rasping claws on a chalk board in comparison to a violin. It sounded so awful, so similar to that other voice which lurked in his nightmares.

"But you are here now," she insisted quietly, "why else would you have come like this?"

"I have to do it," he said in defense of his reasons, "Somebody has to do it."

"And you are that somebody?" those deep ruby eyes glinted in the light, boring straight into his soul.

"Who else can do it?" he told her, "it has to be done or everything is lost."

"Whose benefit are you doing it for?" she persisted.

"I need to do it for everybody," he explained, "they calculated how I could do it down to the last second. And since I'm the only one who can do it, they taught me everything I need to know to make it work."

"Then you're not doing it for yourself?"

He paused, not wanting to think about that, "I- I don't know. It has to be done." Again, he contemplated killing the young girl. All he really knew was wielding the sword.

"That is wrong," she turned and began to walk away without any real explanation, "If you want to do this, you have to do it for yourself."

His training told him he was supposed to shoot her in the back as she set off in the direction he had just come. He was unable. Her walk was seductively gorgeous, but lacked any awareness of her own attractive assets. He could not stop watching her until she turned a corner and disappeared, then he felt irrational dismay at his preadolescent gawkiness. This paralyzing stir of recollections was unwelcome. Rei had always been somehow untouchable. More to the point, she was the one variable none of the mathematical models had been able to completely account for. An encounter with her had been beyond prediction. Her presence addressed something he did not want to consider and she seemed to sit half-in, half-out of reality.

It had to be done, he tried to convince himself. And he had to do it.

The contraction of his window of opportunity loomed like a foreboding shadow. Thoughts of mysterious fourteen year-olds evaporated from his mind as he sprang into action and continued on. There was time to make up. He sprinted, moving like a phantom.

To keep his mind focused, he repeated his litany in its entirety. I will keep moving so I won't run away. I won't run away! Keep moving and don't run away!

* * *

"You would be amazed," one of the medics who was down at the Eva cages rattled through the little speaker, "whoever it was must be something else."

"Competent?" Misato tested, turning a sideways glance at Sagashi, who was looking on nervously.

"More than competent. From the spent casings on the cement, and where the kills were, there must've been a single intruder," the woman replied, "and this person didn't even bother to double tap. Just put one bullet into each head that presented itself. I'm not sure body armor stops a gun in the hands of someone like this. If this person were a musician, I'd call him a virtuoso."

"Him?" Misato asked, an eyebrow raising.

"Well, I don't know," the medic sighed morbidly, "but I've never known a woman with the heart do all this."

"Is there anyone alive?" Misato wondered, feeling disheartened by the latest news of the attacker. She had managed to route enough of the emergency power to operate one camera at a time with the assistance of the security department. At least ten people elsewhere were working to get more of the system back online.

"One shot, one kill, Major. Everybody who encountered our friend is quite dead. Everybody who didn't encounter him... or her, is still breathing. Lot's of bumps and bruises from when Unit-01 got up and moved, but nothing beyond that."

Several stations away, Gendo Ikari was using a microphone to grill a poor lieutenant who happened to be an engineer, "...You're certain Unit-01 has ceased operation?"

"Positive, Commander," the young engineer was saying insistently, "it's as dead as a post. As if it nothing happened."

"Go over it piece by piece. Have Unit-00 readied," Ikari snapped off that link and went on to the next, "Where are those repairs I requested?"

"Two or three minutes before we can bring the power grid back," the next report replied.

"Do it faster," Commander Ikari ordered, "Has the Central Dogma been manually sealed?"

"We're working on it, Sir."

Whenever he managed to get his head back into his work, Sagashi labored to coordinate the internal search parties. A few stations down, Maya focused on bringing the sensory systems back. Dr. Akagi tapped away at the next keyboard with a slight frown on her face. Organization was returning slowly.

"I've reestablished the link to the Magi," Dr. Akagi said finally, "the results to my studies are available now. Hmm, interesting..." she licked her lips, flicking through the pages of graphics. "Very interesting."

"What have you found, Doctor?" Ikari asked placidly.

She shook her head, "There was a decay transient overlaid on the core. Definitely a quantum interference pattern resembling a mind. But there was no injected entry plug, so the normal telemetry is absent."

"Could it be our intruder?" Misato wondered.

"I seriously doubt it," Dr. Akagi replied arbitrarily, her eyes becoming shadowed.

"Didn't somebody say the Eva ripped off its own chest armor?" Misato persisted.

"Yeah," Sagashi nodded eagerly. "That's what they said..."

"Then the core was exposed, maybe..." Misato thought about it, "maybe what happened with Shinji happened with this person. Maybe our killer appeared and fell out of the core."

"Maybe, if Hell's froze over," Dr. Akagi stated flatly. "There has to be some less-obvious explanation."

"But didn't you say..." Misato pressed.

Dr. Akagi looked away from her, "Commander, I think perhaps we should speak in private. There's something you should know. Only you."

Commander Ikari gazed at her through steepled fingers for a long moment, then turned to the console, "How long until the power grid is back?"

"We're initializing now," the tinny speaker stated.

"Very well." With that, Gendo Ikari nodded to Dr. Akagi and stood. Together they swept out of the makeshift command center, leaving a spell of silence in their wake.

"Well, excuse me, Ritsuko," Misato puffed her cheeks. She snapped her fingers at Maya and pointed to the station Dr. Akagi had just vacated. Maya nodded and went to work.

"Major Katsuragi," the medics called again, "We've found two more fatalities."

"Shit," Misato grumbled.

"I'm not sure exactly how they were killed... that's going to need an autopsy." There was a soft chuckle, "but I do have couple good sized bruises here that are shaped like palm prints. It was definitely a man, Major..."

"I can't believe it!" Maya suddenly cried, interrupting the medic on the radio, "I won't believe it!"

"What?!" Misato looked at her.

"Dr. Akagi's analyses," Maya went on, her face paling even in the dim red light, "she's overlaid pilot REMs onto the trace pattern I found in Unit-01's core. The Magi matched it to Shinji!"

Misato sat there thinking, fingering the cross she wore. For a while she did not move. Then she took a deep breath and brushed a hand through her long dark hair. Without saying a thing, she stood up, checked her pistol and left the command center.

* * *

The endless rows of fluorescent light bars in the corridors gave a weak buzz, flickering and flashing as electrical power surged into their inert filaments. Rose colored backup lighting failed when the regular generators caught the load. As the two of them walked without talking, there was a interval like dawn when red gave way and the shadows began to push back. Internal power came alive after its brief reprise.

Dr. Akagi's heels clicked smartly on the smooth white floors as she walked along behind him. Gendo Ikari could feel her eyes on the back of his head. He was a man on a mission -he knew what he wanted and would do anything to get it. Her cooperation and undivided attention had been at a low and sometimes pleasant price, but there would come a time not long in the future when her purpose was served.

The elevator doors willingly hissed open when they reached the end of the hall. He clicked a button on the panel as she stepped in after him. Neither of them spoke until the doors came closed again and the lift began to move.

"The Magi vote unanimously that the pattern Maya found in Unit-01's core is the same as Shinji's latest REM," she told him.

"Shinji's," he commented as he pondered.

"But I don't agree," she hurried on, "The pattern is strongly distorted, as if it were washed through a signal filter or something before hand."

"But it's Shinji's REM," Commander Ikari pointed out. "What outside parties have access to that data?"

"I don't know. I hate to admit it, but Misato could be right; our intruder might have come through Unit-01's core. It is hypothetically possible that someone elsewhere found some way to lock onto the quantum signature of Unit-01's core by remote means, then formed an interstice between two points in space..."

"A wormhole," he prompted.

"If you like," she nodded, "but they'd need Shinji's REM to form the synchronization. Especially the way Unit-01's been responding to the dummy plug trials the past couple weeks. We've explored the physics of using the Evangelion core as a wormhole sink with Dirac Sea principles, but we couldn't make it work. The furthest we managed were the AT Fields."

"I remember." He watched the numbers ticking by on the display above the elevator door, "That does not explain your conclusion about the identity of our uninvited visitor."

"The pattern is warped. The Magi called it Shinji, but that may just have been a carrier signal of some sort," Ritsuko insisted, incredulity in her tone. Her fair visage was flushed, "My best guess it that the distortions are the actual REM of our intruder."

He did not respond immediately. "Who is it then?"

"I'd have to do a fourier analysis, but the chances are we might never know." She shook her head, "We simply don't have that many REMs filed... just those from our sample group. Besides, with the power back on, this intruder won't last long. All human beings have limits, no matter how capable they are."

"And what do you think Shinji's limits are?" he asked noncommittally.

"Not that great," she sighed, grabbing the hand rail as the car slowed to a halt, "Besides, I know first hand that he was with his friend Touji at the Medical facility. Lately, we've had him surrounded by NERV personnel twenty-four hours a day. It couldn't be him."

"Hmm," Gendo sighed thoughtfully as the elevator doors slipped open. "There is one aspect of Evangelion core theory you seem to have overlooked."

"We only learned about this intruder seven minutes ago," she began as they walked onto the polished floor, "I'm still wrestling with the idea that he's even here."

As always, his office was luminous despite its darkness and volume. Several diffuse ambient lights revealed the artwork. The etching on the extensive stone ceiling resembled the Sephirothic diagrams, the ascendance of spirituality. In counterpoint on the floor, to be trodden over by human feet, was an atomic particle collision trace recorded in the cloud chamber of some colossal nuclear accelerator. Strolling along a stylistic loop representing a debris fragment trajectory, Commander Ikari approached where his massive desk sat against the windows, overlooking the two major forces defining humanity. He placed a hand on the desk, touching its always pristine finish.

The tapping of Ritsuko's high heels stopped.

Through the broad windows, the faint glow from Tokyo-3 shimmered across the nighttime stretches of the Geofront.

He began to turn around, "Perhaps we can suppose that this intruder was meant to be here for no longer than fifteen minutes..."

The scientist was not about to respond. Ritsuko Akagi's blonde head lulled unconsciously to the side in the dim light and her arms hung past her waist. She was lowered to the floor amid the halo of her ever-present white lab coat. It was almost by antigravity.

A dark form stood over the collapsed woman slowly, as tall as Commander Ikari. It glided, weight shifting invisibly and silently as it moved one foot, then the other. The muzzle of a pistol emerged into the shaft of light first, followed by an arm, then dark, sharp eyes and bristle-cut brown hair with a burst of white in the bangs. Both eyes open, the man lined up the pistol sights straight into Gendo Ikari's face. A jaw muscle worked. There was a scar that ran from the bridge of his nose down across the point of his grizzled chin.

"Shinji..." the name slipped out of Ikari's mouth in that instant of surprise, when recognition struck him squarely. Like staring at a funhouse mirror...

The intruder's mouth worked, "Fourteen minutes, thirty-two seconds, plus or minus forty-five." His voice was nearly Gendo's own.

"What?" Commander Ikari asked. He could not deny the race of his heartbeat.

"My Window, father," he said in that quiet, direct voice. He gave the faintest nod with his head toward Dr. Akagi, "I- I didn't killer her."

"How long you're here?" Gendo asked, pacing slowly across the front of his desk. "Where are you from?"

"I need to kill you now, father," he said simply.

* * *

The intruder's blood boiled with adrenaline and he struggled to keep his breathing still. His gun sight drifted and his hands seemed to have developed a shake. He felt cold sweat down the back of his stolen shirt. This man, a posted picture he had put bullets through twenty times a day, was the pinnacle. The edge of the window was so close. He wanted to blink to clear his eyes, but couldn't.

"I think I fully understand now," his father said, as cool and collected as he had always been. "By core theory, a wormhole interstice might be raised between two temporal states of that same core. Time is a spatial dimension, as Yui always said. Can I take this to mean that the seventeenth angel never appears?"

"No, it came," Shinji replied slowly enough that he could keep the quaver out of his voice. The edge of the window was here, how could he continue to move? What was stopping him from running away now? "Whatever it is you call them."

"Then it happened?" the ultimate target asked conversationally.

"It what?"

"Tell me, Shinji, what brought you here, pointing a gun at me?" Why was he always so strong? His voice was paralyzing.

"Someone has to do it," Shinji blurted, struggling to squeeze the trigger. The window was closing.

"Do what? After the Third Impact, isn't the world right?"

"Instrumentality was wrong," Shinji hissed, trying to propel himself into anger. He still couldn't pull the trigger, "Artificial evolution, the whole goddamned unnatural thing! It's wrong!"

"It's evolution," his father responded without hesitation, "It's inevitable."

"I was sent here to stop it!" he shouted, "When it happened, you, Keele and your fighting didn't create one perfect world, you created all worlds! Bad, good, dead, everything! Least that's what they say, I don't understand any of it. I never understood! Father, seventeen 'Angels' before? Try a thousand after! That's the only thing I can understand..."

"And you think killing me will stop the passage of time?" he asked, steadily making his way across the reflective floor. "Evolution is change with time."

"They said to pull the trigger on you. They said you're the one. Pull the trigger in this window and it doesn't happen," Shinji tried desperately to explain. To justify himself. His finger wouldn't budge. There was no place else to go.

I won't run away.

"Is this one for you, Shinji?" the man asked, not moving for a moment. "You obviously prepared for a very long time."

Shinji the intruder squinted very slightly. His muscles tensed. "Somebody has to do it..."

"Why?"

So many people dead! One bullet at just the right time can stop it all and change the entire world. And only you can do it Shinji! Practice Shinji, practice, know your enemy. Shoot. Hit the pressure point. Rewire the door. Seventeen minutes, Shinji, too long. Fifteen minutes and it's over. One shot to get it right. Think through the pain. Run faster. Quieter. Do it again, our calculations are perfect. Don't hesitate for a second.

"It has to be done," narrowing his eyes, he steadied his arm one last time.

And pulled the trigger.

The bullets refused go straight. He had put holes through that face ten thousand times. He had tried to hate that face so much. So similar to his own. He pulled the trigger, a master marksman with countless weapon types. He could shoot as well as he could breathe. He could kill with nearly every part of his body and had done so in training as many times as was necessary for him to get it right. Life was cheap next to an infinite chance at redemption.

The gun boomed four times in a row, but the bullets wouldn't fly true. His father was still standing there, no look of fear or love on his face.

Shinji the intruder couldn't understand. This was the way it had to be. Wasn't it? This was the one vulnerable point in time.

Then two more gunshots sounded, but he had not pulled the trigger. Where did they come from?

The window was at its edge, and his time was up. There was a mist of blood expelling into the dark air. It was his blood, he realized. He hardly cared. Statistically, this was the one hundred percent probable outcome, given either success or failure. Such was the defining feature of the window's sill. It was something he had known for years. There was no place else to move to. Was this running away? Was this what he wanted? He allowed the gun in his hand to drop. He allowed his body to drop. Finally, he gave up.

Fifteen minutes and fifty-two seconds. Long overdue.

"I'm sorry," that awful voice which was his own stated aloud.

He felt so peaceful. Was this right? So many people were relying on him. He did not want to run away. Did he?

Two faces looked down into his eyes. One glistened with fresh tears. The other was stiff and emotionless. He could no longer focus his vision.

"I'm sorry," his mouth tasted so bitterly.

Peaceful. He felt peaceful.

* * *

When the elevator doors opened, Misato flinched at the muzzle flash in the dim room. Four deafening shots rang out in rapid succession. Commander Ikari was standing in the middle of the huge office along with someone she did not recognize. Ritsuko was laying motionlessly on the floor to the side. Was she dead? The unidentified man was firing a gun at Gendo Ikari!

Without thinking, she whipped her own weapon out, lined it up and opened fire.

She finally saw the man's face as he fell to the floor. Her hand went to her mouth and tears welled in her eyes. Her throat caught. Her worst fears were confirmed. Maya had been right.

Blood pumping out steadily onto the floor, the man's eyes rolled in their sockets. He twitched his fingers mindlessly.

"Who sent you?" Commander Ikari asked in an oddly quiet tone. His mouth was set in tight line as he looked down into the aged face of his son.

"I- I'm sorry, f-father," the intruder croaked, bodily fluids running down his scarred face, "I tried... to do what... you taught me to..."

"What I taught you?"

"Maybe... maybe next time. I'm s- sorry..."

The window closed.

The End.

The Characters and Eva belong to Gainax, but the story is mine  
Copyright 2001, viggen


End file.
